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Comment by dannysu | Hacker News Reader

This can be enough for me to consider leaving depending on how it's fixed.

This response says absolutely nothing about how the vulnerability is prevented in the future. It's just a bunch of vague promises and mumbo jumbo. What specific procedures are in place to prevent it? At a minimum, I expect to see something specific like when you guys almost lost your domain because of Gandi [1].

And even then, can I have an option to select absolutely no human intervention possible? Having any human intervention is simply not acceptable.

I already have multiple ways of recovering my account, and I never, ever want human assistance on this. I use a password manager, and I will never, ever need FastMail assistance on login.

[1]: https://blog.fastmail.com/2014/04/10/when-two-factor-authent...

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At a minimum, normally when speaking of the other big mail providers, you wouldn’t get an explanation on a public forum at all.

Especially because technical folks like us don’t know to communicate well, words can be misinterpreted, etc. It’s actually not a good strategy to respond to such concerns in public.

Also in my opinion, people that make threats of leaving in public unless certain demands are met usually have their mind set already and can’t be swayed.

As for never needing human assistance, never say never — if relying solely on your password manager, I hope you have a digital last will for your spouse or children.

I understand what you're saying, but I think perhaps we can agree that the current response is insufficient?

Have you taken a look at the link I supplied above where FastMail wrote about how 2fa protection could be bypassed at Gandi? They were very specific and clear about the recommendations being implemented.

Now, compare that to their current response. I think definitely the difference can be seen.

This is serious stuff.

And, I'm absolutely serious about never needing human assistance. I already have mechanism setup for my family to retrieve my digital assets should I disappear tomorrow. I worked on this together with my wife. I know most people have not thought about this and you're right in your skepticism, but I'm serious.

For what is worth, I’d also like a toggle in the settings to never involve human assistance.

But we technical folks are very odd and I’m assuming they have users that really need human assistance.

I do agree the response is insufficient, my point is that such discussions in public are dangerous for the company and it’s not the norm for company reps to give detailed explanations without prior preparations.

Oh, and also, I use my own domain on top of having a backup of my emails.

What this means is that if all recovery options are not working and I'm actually locked out, I can fix it.

I own the domain, I own my past emails, I can still get emails. Maybe I'll lose some emails for a day, but that's it. If I want to prove my identity to FastMail, I can also prove that I own the domain.

But the point is, getting locked out of something as important as email is not gonna happen due to my screw-up. It's more likely for a support loophole to screw me over.

> And even then, can I have an option to select absolutely no human intervention possible?

> I already have multiple ways of recovering my account, and I never, ever want human assistance on this.

Yep, I'll second this feature request. Put as many disclaimers and confirmation mechanisms on it as you need to in order to keep people from accidentally enabling it. I will happily assume responsibility for it.

Also, could you please add ability to get a phone call (instead of text message) to receive recovery options?

That way I can setup my grandparents' phone number or something obscure as yet another recovery option.

And then, please let me lock down any possibility of your support staff screwing up.

That's a possibility. We've talked about using something like twillio to read the message out. We haven't had the feedback that this is in high demand.

It also brings issues of its own. Home phones are hard to block number on, and it could be used to troll people in the middle of their night. We need to consider those risks too - it's not a simple and obvious win.

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